


The Marvelous Porpentina

by olivemartini



Series: Miscalleneous Newt/Tina [8]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crimes of Grindewald, F/M, I had a little fun with the salamander bit, Insecure Newt, Theseus is sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 21:42:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16751992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: The first time that Theseus sees Tina, he doesn't really notice her.He's not paying attention to her at all, actually, too busy being angry at his brother to notice the woman beside him and wonder if that was the friend he had been mumbling about ever since he got back from New York, too bothered over the audacity that Newt had walked into a foreign ministry wearing his own face.  Too busy remembering when he hugged him, when he was trying to warn him and as he pulled apart there was that one little pinch at the back of his head and Theseus had assumed that a button of Newt's coat sleeves had snagged in his hair, and he should have known, damn it, he should have known.The second time he sees her, he's too upset over Leta to notice anything at all.





	The Marvelous Porpentina

The first time that Theseus meets Tina, he's too angry to really get a look at her.

He's not paying attention to her at all, actually, too busy being angry at his brother to notice the woman beside him and wonder if that was the friend he had been mumbling about ever since he got back from New York, too bothered over the audacity that Newt had walked into a foreign ministry wearing his own face.  Too busy remembering when he hugged him, when he was trying to warn him and as he pulled apart there was that one little pinch at the back of his head and Theseus had assumed that a button of Newt's coat sleeves had snagged in his hair, and he should have known.  

He never once considered even glancing at the woman beside him, not until she's freezing the cases in mid air and looking at him like Theseus is something she wants to squish underneath the bottom of her shoe, and then with a flick of her wand she's sending him crashing back into a chair, leaving him tied up and gagged for the other aurors to find.

Theseus was impressed, the first time.

The second time, he's barely even paying attention to her.

They're in an auror meeting.  He hadn't expected her to be an auror, what with all the times that Newt had raged against the ministry and their policies and how he never even listened to Theseus when he tried to make him understand that there are bad people out there, that when there are bad people sometimes you have to do things for the greater good ( _and how those words would haunt them, how they would ring in his ears as he stared at the ceiling and thought about that blue fire, how it was so cold it was hot, the way Leta had looked at him and that moment of disbelief where he thought that she was just as bad as everyone told him she was, but then she was pointing her wand at Grindewald and Theseus realized he would have given anything for her to be just as evil as she had once promised him she was_ ), and yet here she was, sitting in the front row with perfect posture and looking very much like she would rather be hiding in the back.

She doesn't say anything.  Theseus doesn't say anything, either.  No one is really expecting them to.  It was a defeat, completely and totally.  Theseus had never suffered so crushing a loss- his men cut down or joining the wrong side, Leta gone, his brother suddenly being looked at like he's some tactical genius, and none of them with any idea where Grindewald had gone.  

But at least, he had thought, clinging to some lost hope that he clutched tight to his chest, at least he still had his brother.  His little brother, his to protect, who never liked to be touched and shrugged away from his embraces and mumbled his protests at the ground when the people who loved him ( _was it love, the way Theseus treated him sometimes?  He thought it had been.  He had been trying to be loving_ ) begged him to be just a bit more normal, turning to him and grabbing him by the shoulders, pulling him in close, comforting him the way that Thesues should have been comforting Newt, and as he had stood there, the last blue sparks from that freezing fire dying at their feet, Thesues remembered thanking god for that, that he still had him.

Tina couldn't say the same.

"Mr. Scamander."  She wasn't pretty.  Not pretty like Leta was.  Not pretty like Theseus had been expecting, from the few details that he had managed to pry out of Newt.  "I just wanted to offer my condolences."

She was the image of propriety.  Neat hair, clean suit, stretching out her hand to him.  It doesn't matter if the words are empty, they had to be said.

( _But they weren't empty.  She meant them, he could see it, she was sorry, sorry and hurting, and the uncertainty on her face was the same uncertainty that he sometimes sees flit across Newt's face, and he cannot bear to be mean to her, not when his brother cared so much for her._ )

( _It was in the eyes.  That was where the sorrow was, where you can always find it, even if someone is trying to hide it._ Salamanders,  _Newt had blurted out, when he took Theseus back into his magic zoo to give him time to lick his wounds in private, and Theseus could only look at him like he was crazy._ Her eyes remind me of salamanders.   _A pause, a scuffle, and then for the first time in a long time, Newt looks up at him and smiles, not breaking eye contact._ Jacob told me not to tell her.

 _Theseus had laughed.  Maybe it was wrong to sit there and laugh, when his fiancé had burned to nothing right in front of him and he hadn't thought to say "I love you" back, when the ministry was sending howler after howler to summon him, but it was just so damn funny, to sit here after that and talk with his little brother about girls, and hear that he wanted to tell the woman that he fancies that she had eyes like a salamanders._ Probably best you didn't.

I did though,  _is what he says back, laughing._ She knew exactly what I meant.)

"Thank you," Theseus finds himself saying, and no matter how hard he looks, he cannot find anything even remotely reptilian about her.  "I'm sorry for your sister."

There's a flicker of pain across her face, and then it gets tucked away, carefully, cautiously, like she wants to be able to pull it out and examine it later.

"Queenie...."  She sighed, bit her lip, shook her head, and for a moment he swore her eyes were sparkling, but when she looked at him again, there were no tears on her face.  "She's always been different."

He latches onto it.  Thinks it might be common ground for a moment, their different siblings, their siblings that they love but that make their lives so hard.  "Siblings, right?  Can't live with them,"

He means it to be a joke.  A conversation starter.  Something that she can tag onto, easily, where she finishes the sentence and they have a topic to get them through the next fumbling moments of necessary conversation, but she just rears back.  Shutters closed, her eyes flashing, and there is a bit of fire in them, he thinks, something of flame and something of steel, but still nothing salamander.  

"Well."  She hitches her bag up over her shoulder, and it's another moment before her realizes that he had offended her, somehow.  "You take care of yourself, Mr. Scamander."

 

 

The next time he sees her, a full three days later, he realizes he should have just turned around.

He's in Newt's house.  It was strange, how a common enemy and a common pain can bond people together.  Theseus used to have trouble getting the two of them to stay in the same room together for more than an hour, what with how disappointed Theseus would always find himself being and how upset Newt would get in return, the way he couldn't focus on anything but his creatures and how Theseus  _just didn't understand._ Now, in the aftermath of Grindewald's gathering at the cemetery, Theseus doesn't think there's been a day that they haven't been around each other.  One day, Theseus had shown up at Newt's house and realized that the wards weren't blocking him anymore, so he just walked right in without knocking and went right down to the basement, and it's what he did every other time he needed to talk to him and Newt wasn't responding to his fire messages.

It's what he did that day, which is why he barges in on Newt and Tina without wondering whether his little brother might be busy.

"I just can't believe she would do that."  Leta had always told him that Theseus was bad at picking up signals, but for once, he knows that he should turn around.  Tina is sitting on one of Newt's tables, hunched over and crying into her hands, and Newt is standing in front of her, his hands hovering in the air, flitting from her wrists to her thighs to her shoulders, unsure where they were allowed to rest.  At his shoulder, Pickett was whimpering with some sort of sympathetic grief.  "That she would follow him."

Newt crouched down in front of her, pulling her hands away, trying for what he surely thinks is a brave smile.  He doesn't even flinch when she reaches out to him, Theseus notices, and he doesn't know whether to be happy or disappointed that he was no longer the favorite.  ( _And he was the favorite. And the least favorite.  It was a very complicated thing._ ) 

"Grindewald is very persuasive.  Once she sees,"  Newt swallows, nervous, and his hands are hovering again, until she takes his hand in hers and presses them to her stomach, like she's drowning and Newt is a lifeline.  "She'll learn what he is."

"It isn't that."  She said the words like they were something shameful, and then starts crying all over again.  "We were each other's everything."  Theseus thinks, a bit numbly, that she does not cry like Leta cried.  Nothing about her is like Leta.  That's probably a good thing.  He had loved Leta, but she was a greedy thing and Newt never had the heart to tell the people he loves no, not when it really mattered.  Tina wouldn't even ask him.  "How could she leave me?"

Theseus intends to leave.

And he would have, too, if one of the baby nifflers hadn't lunged for his pocket watch and sent him tumbling down the last few steps.

"Mr. Scamander."  Tina gasped and stood up, letting go of Newt and jumping out of his reach in one fumbling motion, her hands fluttering to her hair and her face.  There's a hurried spell and a second later there is no evidence of tears on her face.  "I-,"

"I'm sorry."  He doesn't know who he's apologizing to, whether it's her or Newt, he just knows that this was ridiculous, him standing there holding a niffler by the scruff of its neck while she tries to stop crying.  "I didn't mean."

"You didn't."  Her face was bright red.  Tina turned to Newt, who was no longer looking at her, and for a second, something in her face softened, and she reached out to touch the inside of his wrist, just for a second before she remembered they had an audience and snatched her hand away.  "I should go."

"Don't go."  Newt stood up, too, and chased after her for a few steps.  "He can go."

"No, I-," Tina tried again, then shook her head, and turned and moved back up the steps, leaving the two Scamanders staring at each other from across the room.  Theseus is still holding the niffler.  He really wished Newt would come and take it, because he's got no idea what to do with it and never had been all that nurturing, but it doesn't look like his little brother is feeling all that generous.

"Do me a favor, will you," Newt says, teeth gritted, and when he rips the feeding bucket off the wall, it's with enough force that the whole shelf comes tumbling down.  Theseus fixes it with a wave of his wand on instinct and Newt glares at him.  "Don't take this one, too."

 

 

 

It was the first time he had mentioned Leta, and it seemed like it would be the only time.  Theseus waits, all that afternoon and that night and into the next morning, but when Newt seems unlikely to say anything at all, much less anything about Leta, he leaves for the ministry.

 _I was his first kiss,_ Leta had said, when they were two weeks into their relationship.  She had pulled away from him, put her hand out to stop him, eyes full of something that looked a bit like guilt.   _His first everything, really, as far as we got.  I'm not entirely confident that there's been a second._

Theseus had stared at her.  It just didn't make sense to him, that this woman, this firecracker of a human being who he had seen drop men to their knees with just a wave of her wand, had ever been interested in his little brother.  He didn't want to think about it, didn't want to consider the implications of this.  Out of the two Scamander boys, Theseus was never the one who was concerned about how other people might hurt.

 _I don't care,_ he had said, and there had only been a flicker of protest before Leta, too, seemed to push the thought aside.

It's only now that she's gone that Theseus is starting to think that maybe he should have.

 

 

 It's another two weeks when he sees her again, and this time, it's clear that neither of them were expecting anyone else to be there.

"Mr. Scamander."  She is the one to drop her wand first, and she is also the one to shove away the awkwardness and reach her hand out for him to shake.  She's braver than him.  "Fancy seeing you here."

They are at the cemetery, or at least, what's left of it.  The fire had burned everything up, and even though at the time Theseus had been having trouble wrapping his head around the idea that one man would have this much power, looking at the remnants, he doesn't doubt Flamel's prediction that it would have burned up the entire city.

"I."  Looking at her, looking at this, his reasons were coming were floundering.  "I just wanted to come look."

"Yes."  She looked over at him, from his hair to his shoes, and Theseus squirmed uncomfortably.  He wants to ask what she thought she was looking at, but then she was marching forward, stepping over all the burnt out rubble of gravestones to the center, until she was standing right on top of where Grindewald had stood.  Theseus follows her, telling himself it's to keep an eye on her and not at all because he was afraid of all the ghosts that might be lurking here, trying not to imagine he was passing the spot where Leta had fallen, where his friends had fallen.  

"I'm going to have to go back to New York soon."  She's squinting up at the sky.  There are tears again.  For a moment, he feels a flash of envy, that she can cry without making a sound.  Theseus always sounds like someone is breaking him open.  "The ministry wants a report."

"Oh."  He realizes, probably for the first time, that he was her boss.  Technically.  No wonder she's been so formal over the past few weeks.  "Are you saying good bye to Newt?"

"Of course I'm," She starts to snap at him but the anger fizzles.  She looks surprised, but Theseus can relate.  Everything takes too much energy these days, even anger.  "You'll take care of him, won't you?"

"Who?"

"Newt.  He needs taken care of.  He needs  _someone._ "  She looked like she wanted to punch him.  "And I'm not sure what had gone on between the two of you, Mr. Scamander, but I'm more inclined to take his side over yours, so if I hear that you hurt him, or are treating him bad, or stole one of his old girlfriends and didn't apologize even though it upset him so much he collected a magic zoo, I'll, I-,"

She cuts herself off again and looks at the ground instead of him.  Theseus isn't sure why- if she had run out of anger again, or couldn't think of a good enough threat, or if it was just the mention of Leta and a reminder of what had happened here, but she doesn't look like she's going to be starting back up anytime soon.  And he appreciates the gesture, even if he still doesn't know how he feels about being bossed around by a woman.  But he expects that he'll have to get used to that, seeing that it doesn't look like Newt is going to be saying good bye to Tina anytime soon.

And Leta had always yelled at him, anyways.

"Of course I'll take care of him."  He sounded vaguely offended, he noticed.  "He's my brother."

At this, Tina snorts, and it's the first time that Theseus starts to wonder what Newt had told her, how many times he had hurt him without even knowing.  "Trust me," She says, and this time there is nothing for her to joke about, just empty eyes staring down at the blackened tombs, watching something that Theseus cannot see.  "No one can hurt you like family."

"Believe me," Theseus says, and this hurts a bit, to say the words and find that they were true.  "You're a better family to him than I'll ever manage to be."

Tina doesn't deny it.

Theseus tries to be happy for them.

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic


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